“I don’t have to tell you–” I start, but he cuts me off.
“Yes, you do. Because it hurts more when I see you hurting yourself, and I don’t know why.”
He takes my hand, and I realize I was digging my nail in again.
He looks at it and then at me. “Did you ever notice this?” He shows me my hand.
I look at it and don’t see anything weird. “What?”
“Tilly, you are actively hurting yourself day after day! Remember when you told me you abuse yourself, nothing on the outside, only on the inside?”
He repeats the words I told him when I admitted my nights. “Yeah.”
“Well, it’s a lie, because this cut never disappears,” he points to the cut, and I realize he’s right.
I used to notice more, but it sort of blurred into my being.
You don’t notice your nose, because it’s always there.
“Every day, you dig into it more and more, and that hurts me, Tilly.”
He looks at me desperately, and I hate myself a little more. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, “No, Tilly. Don’t apologize for yourself.” Then he pauses before looking at me with a million different forms of hurt on his face. “Tilly. Do you still get the bad nights?”
I sharply intake a breath.
One part of me is screaming to tell the truth.
The other one is telling me to lie.
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“No.” he leans his head on my shoulder, and I thread my fingers through his hair. “How much?”
“Every night.” My brain apparently just decided to go all out.
He looks at me, and I realize his eyes are glassy. “Tilly–” his voice cracks.
“Don’t look at me like that, Luca,” I warn when my tears threaten to spill again. “Like I’m a disappointment."
“Tilly! Stop calling yourself everything you aren’t! You’renota disappointment. You’renota mistake. You’renotbroken. You’renotstupid. And you. Don’t. Need. Fixing.”
He looks at me, punctuating each word makng sure it hits the target.
And every time, it hits exactly where he is shooting the words.
It feels like he’s poking bruises.
But it also feels like he’s slowly putting all the pieces of my heart that shattered in his room back together.
We sit there for what feels like forever, him resting on my wall, me resting on his chest, and time seems to slow down.
“The nights were peaceful when I admitted it to you. It came back when you went to Italy, and never went away.” I admit.
